Kingdoms of the Sudan by R.S. O'Fahey J.L. Spaulding

Author:R.S. O'Fahey, J.L. Spaulding [R.S. O'Fahey, J.L. Spaulding]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Regional Studies
ISBN: 9781315451114
Google: qPMwDQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-10-04T04:16:40+00:00

VIII

The rise of the Keira

The Keira sultan, Ibrāhīm b. Muḥammad al-Ḥusayn, who was killed unsuccessfully defending his state in 1874, was only seven generations removed from Sulaymān, the first historical Keira sultan, who, as is argued below, probably ruled about the middle of the seventeenth century. Concerning the Keira kings between Sulaymān and Daali, ‘the father of the Fur’, jadd al-Fūr, the traditions are very confused, but taking an average of the regnal lists we have, the period between them would appear to be about eight generations.1 This may suggest, although it cannot be proved, that a Fur or Keira kingdom existed in Jabal Marra as early as the fifteenth century and therefore was contemporary with the Tunjur empire in northern Dār Fūr.

If this supposition is correct, then the traditions concerning the origins of the Keira state may be interpreted in the following manner. The Keira clan, who came from the Kunjara section of the Fur people, ruled a kingdom in Jabal Marra which formed part of the Tunjur empire, to whose ruling dynasty they may have been connected by dynastic marriage. Sometime after about 1580 (d’Anania’s reference) but before 1660 when the name Fur first appears in contemporary records, the Tunjur state collapsed and the Keira expanded rapidly to fill the vacuum.

The ambiguity of Aḥmad al-Ma‘qūr’s relationship to the Tunjur and Keira thus may conceal the fact that the two dynasties were related. It may not be too fanciful to note that the names Tunjur and Kunjara could form a singular/plural pair in Fur.2 Their Tunjur connexions were naturally soon forgotten by the Keira, particularly if they also arrogated to themselves traditions concerning immigrants from the Nile – the other aspect of the Aḥmad al-Ma‘qūr cycle – which had originally belonged to the Tunjur. But the Tunjur connexion was not forgotten in Wadai, since the latter continued to pay to the Keira the tribute formerly paid to the Tunjur.3

This interpretation of the traditions, although admittedly speculative, would help to explain the shadowy nature of the pre-Sulaymanic Fur traditions, belonging as they do to a Fur tribal chiefdom, about which in the time of later imperial and Islamic splendour it was convenient to forget. It would also explain the apparently very rapid spread of Keira power under Sulaymān and his immediate successors in the latter part of the seventeenth century. Heirs to an imperial tradition, they were expanding to take control of a Tunjur trading network and empire that had existed in the recent past.

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